NFC Bluetooth and Wi-Fi handover

NFC is a very interesting technology that is becoming ubiquitous in smartphones but is also finding its way in Automotive. We will look below at a couple of use-cases that are enabled by NFC that possibly not very well-known but in fact very relevant to IVI.

You can find out more about the NFC stack in Tizen on the Linux NFC project main page.

Wi-Fi handover for IVI

Unfortunately, there are not Smartphone devices out there yet that implement the Wi-Fi handover as defined by the NFC Forum. In the interim, we have added some code in Tizen IVI that allows us to demonstrate and test this functionality using a non-standard app called NFC task launcher loaded on an Android device.

Preparing the Tizen IVI image (Head Unit)

Smartphone

Note: You do not need to define any specific task, installing the application is enough.

Demo description

On the head unit:

Enable Wi-Fi connmanctl enable wifi

Enable Wi-Fi tethering connmanctl tether Wi-Fi on <SSID> <passphrase>

Make sure that neard is running and that the adapter is powered on (see TIVI-1825), if not:

(as root)systemctl start neard.service

/usr/lib/neard/test/enable-adapter nfc0

Start the neard (NFC) script: /usr/lib/neard/test/wifi-handover

This script is waiting for an NFC device to touch the head unit NFC spot/dongle.

Once an NFC device is detected, the script will send an "NFC task launcher" related MIME NDEF, containing the ConnMan tethering SSID and passphrase.

The NFC task launcher app running on the handset will then get this data and trigger a Wi-Fi association with the specified SSID.

Tips and tricks

Disconnect your smartphone from any Wireless network prior to doing this, otherwise the new network will appear in your list but it will not be joined by default (as it's already connected to a WiFi network)

Make sure you keep your smartphone very close to the NFC adapter during the handover

Bluetooth handover for IVI

There are many Smartphone devices that had implemented the bluetooth handover, people could use NFC technology to pair Bluetooth smartphones,headsets, and speakers with its NFC-enabled devices.Currently, there have no app on IVI used for bluetooth handover, while we could use neard-test to complete pairing ---simply touch the two devices to be paired.